worth every minute

The cheese factor of this post promises to be extremely high, so be forewarned.

Parenting is tough. It's easily the hardest thing I've ever done. (oxymoron?) But everyday I am reminded why it's worth it. Starting today I will to start making a note of those moments, and blogging them when at all possible.

Lori has been acting up for the last few months, probably the "terrible two's" even though she just turned two last week. (We always said she was advanced. :) ) She's been getting on my last nerve A LOT and has decided that bedtime should take over an HOUR! BUT like I said there are times when she says or does something that just melts my heart! This time it really didn't involve me so much, but made me feel so appreciative that God has placed her in my care (sometimes I wonder what He was thinking! Ok, most of the time I wonder what He was thinking) and that He has allowed me to get to witness the sweet moments of her growing up.Several weeks ago Lori and I were headed to Bible Study and as we were passing the play ground we heard a little voice say "Lori!". We stopped to see who had said it and saw our friends little girl Rachel standing at the top of the play structure. She immediately headed for the slide, slid down and raced over to the rod-iron fence that contains the playground. Lori said "ACHEL!",(yes Achel... it's not a typo) ran to meet her and the girls embarrassed through the fence. I took a picture on my phone! (which I actually thought didn't get saved on my phone and was super sad but then mysteriously showed up on my phone yesterday!)

(I don't know how or why it happened but I'm so glad that this picture showed up. I know I'll never forget it, but I'm just so happy I have a copy of this moment to share with everyone.)

Why is this such a sweet moment for me? I think it's because it reminded me that I, we, are so blessed by our community here in Houston. My child/children are loved so much by the people around them. Moving here was a big step for us BUT it has proven time and again to have been the right decision. And it also made me realize that Lori is growing up so fast, and that she's made her first REAL friend.

"We did it!"

In the words of Dora the Explorer, "WE DID IT! We did it, we did it -YA!" For the last month or so Lori has been sleeping on a crib mattress on the floor. Well, she was SUPPOSED to be sleeping, but for the first few weeks she would refuse to nap, and at bedtime she would either come out of her room every 5 min, OR even worse, NOT come out of her room and get in to HEAPS of trouble... and I mean HEAPS! (one night she went through 35 of my homemade diaper wipes, just cause!! THIRTY FIVE!!) So I decided that the best way to remedy this situation was to use bribery, and for the bribe... the ultimate prize in the eyes of a child! THE STICKER! I'm not sure why but stickers are like crack cocaine to children.

I made her a sticker chart, Dora themed of course, and every time she took a nap in her "big girl bed" or didn't get up too many times to play around her room at bed time she got a sticker. (The last box IS filled... Lori just put the sticker a little outside of the box... ;) )

Once she filled up the chart we were gonna go out and get her a REAL big girl bed!! Well last week, she filled up the chart, and as promised, we went out and got her a bed! It required moving around some furniture but here it is, THE big girl bed!

Lori was SO excited when we got it set up that she started crying for milk and a binky even though it was still a little early for bedtime. She did get up a few times (which is normal for Lori) but now she is fast asleep in her new bed!! I'm waiting to peak in on her, which I'm sure Jorge will frown upon, but I really want to see how cute she looks sleepin' in that big bed.

The other side of the room... where David will be sleeping... eventually. (We will have to get a new Uppercase Living sticker for the wall above the crib... I'm already workin' on it. :) )

Siblings!

So far, Lori and David seem to be getting along famously. Obviously David is a little oblivious to his surroundings, but Lori is still LOVING having him around. The older he gets the "easier" it is to get pictures of the two of them together. Here are just a few of the shots I got this weekend... just looking at them makes me happy.

On Sunday morning as we were getting ready for church, I put David in/on our bed so that I could have my hands free to pack up the diaper bags etc., well Lori saw him on our bed and climbed up to be next to him. Then she said, "snugga?" (meaning snuggle) Asking to snuggle is a new thing for Lori, but it's been happening at least once a day. In fact usually Jorge's day starts at around 6:30 to "snugga Dada? snugga?" This was the first time she'd asked to "snugga" with David and it was so flippin' cute we had to get the camera.

Later on Sunday I had to give David a bath, but Lori didn't want to be left out. I was forced to put them both in the bath... at the same time. This proved to be equally cute (at least to their overly proud mother) and therefore needed to be photographed.

Silly with Celine

A few months back there was a Celine Dion concert on T.V and (don't judge me) I watched it... again. (Yes again... don't judge, she's awesome!) Anyway, chalk it up to being loopy from lack of sleep from having a new baby, but I got a little silly when she sang "My Heart Will Go On" Lori thought is was hilarious... her squeals were just too funny, so I had to ham it up a little more so we could get it on film. It seems to work.

enjoy!

*sorry for the poor quality of video, it was filmed on a cell phone. :(

Go Texan Day!

Today was Go Texan Day. What is Go Texan Day you ask? Well, it's a day that is set aside for all Houstonians to wear their "Texas garb". That's it. According to Wikipedia it was first thought of in 1938 but wasn't put in to practice until the 1950's. Every year since 1954 Go Texan Day has been the traditional way they kick off the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. It seems to be a real big deal out here... I saw a guy driving his car in a cowboy hat, two kids at target wearing "western gear" (including purple cowboy boots - awesome!) AND a group of people in a flat bed trailer being pulled around our neighborhood, similar to a hayride, but with out the hay... or the horses... or the farm... or any particular purpose what so ever. Only in Texas I suppose.

Since my kids are Houstonians born and raised, I figured we'd follow suit. Jorge says that he can't ever dress up like a cowboy cause he always ends up looking like a migrant worker... sadly, he's kinda right. But I don't think that's the case with the kids though... at least not yet.

Davey in his overalls, and his bandanna cloth diaper (not pictured :) )

and Lori in my cowboy boots.

"GO TEXAN" DAY!!

"Diaper Diaries"

I've finally done it! I said I was going to do it and I did! I am now a user of cloth diapers. Well, I AM not using them, but I'm using them on David. I only had 3 up to start cause I wanted to try it out and make sure I really wanted to use them. And I DID! On Monday I went to a store called Nurtured Family (see link on the right) and got the rest of my "stash", 12 in all. Tuesday was the first day that I used them ALL day and I really enjoyed it, as much as one can "enjoy" diapers I suppose.

I was so excited that I contacted the mom website that I am involved with and pitched an idea of a weekly blog about my adventures in cloth diapers. They LOVED the idea so today they posted my first blog post. I feel so accomplished. It's also got me thinking about doing more writing, i.e product reviews and stuff like that. Who would have thought that cloth diapers could make me want to be a writer. (I use the term loosely of course, and I don't actually know if I want to be a WRITER but I definitely want to do more writing.)

Here's the link to my first post... Diaper Diaries: a first timers adventure in cloth diapers. I'm actually finding that I have so much to say that I'm tempted to make it more than once a week. For those of you who are interested in hearing/learning more about cloth diapers, I'd love to hear your feed back as far as any questions you may have that you would want me to answer or look in to for you.

So now you can all follow me on Momslikeme.com as well as here. Isn't that special? :)

Big girl bed!

About a week ago, Lori discovered that she has the ability to climb out of her crib. We figured this out when I woke up to the sounds of Lori from her dresser opening and closing her drawers trying to get pick out an outfit. That was certainly a shock. So since then we've been making the transition to a "big girl bed", which is really just a crib mattress on the floor of her room. At first it was REALLY difficult. We'd put her in bed, say prayers, sing a song and then close the door. She would either come to the door and try to get out, or walk around the room and find something to play with. We'd hear her singing and playing or fiddling with the door, or we'd hear nothing. For some reason, maybe it's just that I know my daughter WAY too well, but hearing nothing made me feel terribly uneasy. Jorge and I will go back and forth about if we should check on her or not. Usually I'm right and those times that she's quiet are the worst.

Take last night for example, Jorge was gone leading a Bible study at church, so I put Lori to bed myself. She went down really well, she didn't try to come out of her room and when I did hear her I called to her to get in bed and then didn't hear anything for about 30-40 min. It all was really easy... too easy. So I decided to check on her before I hopped in the shower, and I'm glad I did. I found her COMPLETELY nakey, sitting on her bed, with the box of homemade wipes. She had gotten out of her jammies, some how managed to shimmy out of her diaper (that was DUCT TAPED on mind you) and was wiping herself, her bed, and her stuff animals, that's probably why she needed 34 WIPES!! 34 WIPES people! I was furious to say the least! She was nice enough to put the diaper (which was clean by the way) and roughly 28 or so of the wipes in the diaper pail, but even so, I was still so mad.

Napping in her bed was completely out of the question, up until a few days ago. But every day gets better. The other day, after much struggle I finally won, and she napped in her bed. When I went in to check on her (like I said, when it's quiet I worry, so I check on her.) this is what I found.

I guess this counts as sleeping IN her big girl bed...

And on another day...

So we don't bother with the crib anymore. Our baby is growing up! As soon as she masters the crib mattress with out getting up and getting in to trouble we're going to get her a twin bed. (Probably with some Dora sheets.) We are going to put Davey in her old crib EXCEPT for the fact that Lori can now climb IN to the crib too... so no one is safe. :)